“This thing is really happening,” developer Amos Harris told me this week when I ran into him getting coffee in downtown St. Louis.

He was referring, of course, to his $250 million Mercantile Exchange development.

Robust Wine Bar and Takaya New Asian are set to open tonight at the MX, Harris said, after a successful fire inspection Thursday at 6:30 p.m. “We waited for them all day,” he told me.

Robust is located in the Laurel Building at 635 Washington Ave. and Takaya is in the MX at 610 Washington. They join Chris Sommers’ Pi Pizzeria, which opened in May, and Jodi and Maty Aronson’s Snarf’s Sandwiches, which Harris said could open as early as this weekend. “Stanley and I are proud and excited to be a part of Downtown St. Louis and the incredible energy of the MX development,” Arlene Browne, co-owner of Robust with her husband Stanley, said in an email message. Takaya New Asian is owned MX Retail, LLC and operated by Jenny and Eric Heckman, owner of Tani Sushi in Clayton.

For those who are paying attention, the MX has been on a roll lately. Earlier this week came word that its 326-seat movie theater is set to open Jan. 18, 2013, with three digital screens and dining service. As for the proposed $13.6 million National Blues Museum, Pinnacle announced a $6 million donation to the museum in mid-December.

I’m betting those updates gave Harris a better boost than his coffee did.

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